What Christmas REALLY Means to Me

“I write as a physician, one who attempts to heal disease,” introduces M. Scott Peck, M.D. in the second chapter of A World Waiting to Be Born: Civility Rediscovered. He begins to tackle the ambiguity of pain and disease by telling a story of how he, at the age of eight years, wounded himself with a hatchet and observed that over the next few days the skin surrounding his stitched gash became reddened, slightly swollen, and tender to the touch. From a medical perspective he explains the process of how our blood vessels operate during the inflammation of the wound by 'eating' the bad bacteria and removing the garbage that causes infection, and so on.

Simply, health is an ongoing process, often painful, of an organism becoming the most – the best – it can be. And disease is anything, sometimes painful, often painless, that interferes with the process of health.

Of course, being a Christian, I can easily convert the morals of his story into elementary spiritual lessons, especially because Christmas is only two days away and it is the perfect time to meditate on what Christmas really means to me.

The first (moral) is that health is a process.

Spiritual health is a process, too. My husband and I started actively going to church in 2011 when he was on his second year of being unemployed and my personal debts were piling up faster than you could say “bankruptcy.” We needed serious help. God revealed to me the root causes of our financial turmoil: living a six figure lifestyle on a five-digit salary and robbing Him albeit I had no idea at that time. Apparently, we did not realize that Jesus is all we need until Jesus was all we had.

So a second moral is that we need to experience pain for our healing and health.

It was painful in so many levels because we had to figure everything out by ourselves as we did not have a financial adviser or someone more mature to guide us in starting all over again in our marriage. We had to start living daily on a tight budget, and I had to stop my inordinate spending just to pay off my debts in small portions. My husband and I fought often, and we engaged in all sorts of vices to deaden the pain of what was really happening to our relationship and financial life. While my call center career seemed to be going well, there was a palpable sense of loss in admitting that I had hit rock bottom in my personal and spiritual life. I just wanted to push the self-destruct button and disappear from the face of the earth.

Becoming the most that we can be is also the definition of salvation. The term literally means “healing.” As we apply “salve” to our skin to heal it, so we can learn to apply the principles of mental health our lives to heal, to make us whole, to save our souls, individually and collectively.

I am grateful that the Lord has been watching me all these years, eagerly waiting for me to receive his free gift of grace. To make a long story short, he did not just give my husband a suitable job, he also helped me pay my debts within a year and saved us from countless other troubles. The salvation we received was not merely financial, but deeply spiritual. Though we did not deserve any of it, his mercy overflowed in all areas of our life. Christmas to me has never been about Santa Claus and his presents because even as a young girl, I refused to believe he was real; I was not a gullible child. The song warns us that “he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake,” because it advocates that the good old man will reward us for our good behavior which is quite the opposite of what Jesus Christ did. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

This is what the annual Christmas celebration really means to me: I am getting better physically and spiritually because God is my healer. It is a reminder of all that God has done in our life.

“When God tells people what to do, this is not a job description, but a doctor's prescription. He is not telling us to earn wages by laboring for a boss, but to get well by trusting our physician,” John Piper remarkably explains in his book, A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer.

This Christmas, I am reminded again that although we are not rich materially, we are blessed in meaningful other ways. We enjoy good health, the love of our family and friends, and we have the Lord to help us in times of trouble. For we live by faith, not by sight. This Christmas, we still do not have a lot of money, we are not well-traveled like other people, we still try hard to make ends meet, we still experience financial turmoil. And that is okay. Because in spite of all the pain and suffering - we are headed towards complete healing.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)

And although it's been said, many times, many ways, merry Christmas to you!

This family picture was taken on December 2, 2013 at the Alabang Town Center.
God bless you today and always!